E-whupped retail developers extoll mixed-use planning

By GREGORY ZELLER //

The experts have spoken, and their message about the future of retail real estate is clear: Mix it up.

Faced with rising e-retail options and dwindling attendance at brick-and-mortar shopping malls, property owners will need to incorporate mixed-use development into their future plans, including combined retail and residential uses.

Each of the speakers reinforced the mixed-use message. New Hyde Park-based Kimco, which owns interests in 507 U.S. shopping centers comprising 84 million square feet of leasable space, predicts that a decade from now, “retail will look entirely different,” according to Weikranz.

To that end, the publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trust is already eyeing a handful of assets for possible mixed-use conversion, Weinkranz added, including a Queens site where Kimco hopes to build 350 residential units atop 60,000 square feet of existing retail space.

Whalen noted that Virginia-based AvalonBay Communities, also an REIT, has undertaken various mixed-use projects around the country. Exhibit A: the Harrison Metro North Station in Westchester, a 3.3-acre project raising mixed-use construction – including affordable residential units and a parking garage – around a Metro North Railroad station.

But while AvalonBay has had some success working with retail property owners to find suitable redevelopment sites – and there are a handful of Long Island retail centers where the formula would apply – the Island “is slow to move in this direction,” Whalen told the LIREG audience.

“There needs to be some leadership on the land-use side,” Whalen added.

Weinkranz agreed that retail tenants with long terms remaining on existing leases can present obstacles to mixed-use redevelopment plans, with parking requirements and other testy issues often muddying the works.